3 out of 5

Label: Ectopic Ents

Produced by: JG Thirlwell

Despite all the name-flipflopping of early Foetus releases, I’d maintain that JG Thirlwell has been pretty purposeful with what he records under which name; even those initial changeups were indicative of how all-over-the-map the initial Foetus sound was.

Xordox has been no exception to this, very explicitly being “the synthesizer project,” while still mapping to Thirlwell’s later-era leaning towards scores and more cinematic experiences. Keeping this in mind, the first Xordox release very much made sense, as it applied the artist’s grandioseness to a trend of synthwave; instead of feeling derivative, or like bandwagoning, it was rather inspired by that trend, and also released by someone who had been active during said trend’s inspirations’ initial iterations in the 80s. So it was an old punkster’s take on the same, while meanwhile having totally mastered the studio, and significantly shot through with the cultural and sound oddities that interest JG.

The second Xordox release muddied this read somewhat, as it brought in some of the circus-style bop of Thirlwell’s Archer and Venture Bros. work, but it made for an interesting combo nonetheless.

Terraform isn’t a step back from that, necessarily, but it feels like an attempt to dive further into electro without going full genre; still maintaining a tether to the cinematic stuff. It ends up feeling somewhat homeless as a result; like a score for something that the artist has only received an outline of. There can be a heartlessness to completely electronic music (and that can also be purposeful), but that’s not exactly what’s happening – it’s something more about the divide between Planet Xordox’s or Anthrobot’s 60s sci-fi cheek and the rather emotive mash-ups that happen inbetween those tracks, where bleepy electro beats (that truly wouldn’t full out of place on a dedicated electronica label) have choice elements of the Thirlwell sound drizzled atop, just enough to seed some “human” in with the robot. I do imagine there’s a bit of narrative there, as we land on closer Neural Network – a machine mimicking a human – but this is again sort of an outlier tune, more ambient / drone-like, and ultimately lacking in more immersive qualities, as it doesn’t quite dive deep enough.

That’s essentially the summary here: as JG has sought to grow Xordox, finding a sweet spot where he can build on the core electro sound has made for a push and pull of different elements. I don’t think he’s quite found that sweet spot yet, and Terraform is, perhaps as per its title, the progress of that, bits and bobs of the various components amped up and down, culled into tracks which mostly belong together. It’s certainly very, very listenable, just not very absorbing.